Mapping Livable Geographies: Black Radical Praxis Within and Beyond Toronto

Jessica Paulina Kirk

The mid-to-late-2010s involved radical responses to gentrification, surveillance and police violence toward Black diasporic communities in Toronto. My thesis research examines these realities and conditions of Black life in the city, engaging with the following areas of inquiry: The geographies in which Black community organizing and Black art practice take place in Toronto; How Black community organizers, artists and cultural workers relate to and support one another’s work, and how their work responds to historically and contemporarily absented issues concerning Black people in Toronto. Contextualized through theoretic engagement with Black geographies, Black Canadian studies and Black radical thought, this project offers critical insight through a focus group of local Black artists, organizers and community members in Toronto who refuse notions of belonging within a state founded on Black enslavement and Indigenous dispossession. Instead, they theorize tensions and possibilities for Black radical creative practice to generate livable geographies rooted in care.

Keywords: Black geography, activism, Black radical traditions, creative practice, Toronto

Dr. hampton, thank you for your thoughtful and generous guidance - it has offered immeasurable solace. Your courses, our meetings, and broader discussions with the Black Studies Cohort have all been integral to my academic journey. Dr. Tuck, thank you for agreeing to be my second reader, and for your consistent reminders to approach this work with humility and care. Thank you to Black Artists’ Network in Dialogue for allowing me to use the gallery and cultural centre, where I facilitated the focus group meeting for this thesis. Every research participant poured so much vulnerability, honesty, and wisdom into this project – I have so much gratitude toward each of you for your contributions. To my family and friends – you have each been incredibly supportive and patient, even amid my moments of self-doubt. I am so appreciative of your illimitable love. Thank you as well, to each reader for finding their way to this thesis1. Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not thank Black Toronto. Despite and in-spite this city’s insufferability, Black presence continues to generate warmth, joy, and communal care – thank you to each of you who hold space for that beauty. 1 I curated a soundscape while mediating the tensions and possibilities for Black futurity within and beyond Toronto. By sharing this playlist (Kirk, 2020), I hope to create alternative means of engaging with the concepts and ideas being explored throughout this thesis.